When a Hurricane Hits an Offshore Oil Platform
Harvey could seriously damage oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Projects
Two Minutes of Darkness
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John Minchillo / AP So, Eclipse Boomtowns, How’d It Go?
“I think I can speak for the rest of the city staff in that we wish there were a way we could host one of these once a year.”
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Adrees Latif / Reuters ‘The Rainfall Threat Is Only Beginning’
Harvey has weakened after making landfall in Texas, but its biggest danger comes from torrential rain and flooding.
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Eric Gay / AP What 35 Inches of Rain Dredges Up
Hurricane Harvey’s unusual path could hit Houston with rain and storm surges at the same time—surfacing gators, snakes, sewage, and coffins.
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JPL / NASA Forty Years Later, the Golden Record Goes Vinyl
The audio comes from the original tapes that sat untouched in an underground warehouse since the Voyager launched in 1977.
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Larry Keller / Getty Animals Need Commute Routes in Human Habitats
Nonhuman species are facing a loss of connectivity that threatens their daily and seasonal movements.
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NASA Voyager Made the Solar System a Real Place
Forty years later, a mission scientist remembers a time of constant discovery.
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David Gray / Reuters A Grand Unified Theory of Unhealthy Microbiomes
The Anna Karenina hypothesis says that every unbalanced microbiome is unbalanced in its own way.
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Reuters Is Texas Ready for Hurricane Harvey?
Experts have long worried that a powerful storm striking the Gulf Coast could be a costly and deadly environmental disaster.
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Jerry Lampen / Reuters How Mushrooms Became Magic
Did they evolve a powerful hallucinogen to stop insects from getting the munchies?
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Christophe Simon / Getty The Case for Sharing All of America's Data on Mosquitoes
The U.S. is sitting on one of the largest data sets on any animal group, but most of it is inaccessible and restricted to local agencies.
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Ron Illingworth Global Warming Is Threatening Alaska's Prized Wedding Flower
Business is booming for the state’s peony growers. Will climate change ruin things?
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Courtesy of Robert Boessenecker A Prehistoric Toothless Dolphin That Ate by Vacuuming Up Squid
A 30-million-year-old fossil found in South Carolina belonged to a weird, weird creature.
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters The Great American Eclipse Hangover
Hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the path of totality in the afterglow of the astronomical event.
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Jeannette Beranger / The Livestock Conservancy The Fight for America's Disappearing Ancient Dairy Cows
Farmers can’t afford to save the country’s dwindling heritage breeds. But can the dairy industry afford to lose them?
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Jonathan Armstrong / Oregon State University How Climate Change Canceled the Grizzly Salmon Run
On an Alaskan island, one of nature’s greatest spectacles is shutting down, as brown bears abandon fish in favor of a surprising alternative.
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Howard Burditt / Reuters The Foreign Places an Eclipse Can Take You
One of the great joys of an eclipse is when it pushes you out of your way.
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Beawiharta Beawiharta / Reuters The King of Totality
A veteran astronomer describes more than 60 years’ worth of memories from inside the moon’s shadow.
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Alexey Rotanov / Vladimir Wrangel / Shutterstock / ... America in the Shadows
The nation’s dogged attempts to chase eclipses follow its own haphazard maturation.
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Ilya Naymushin / Reuters A Thorny Debate in Plate Tectonics May Finally Be Resolved
Scientists believe they’ve answered: How deep is a continental plate?
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Yoray Liberman / Getty Offbeat Ways to Enjoy the Total Eclipse
Readers plan to take in the eclipse using psychedelic drugs, boat trips, and other diversions.
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Courtesy of Pat Rawlings What Would the Solar Eclipse Look Like From the Moon?
A space artist dreamed up the experience in a painting in 1989, nearly three decades before the actual event.
